Poor diet/nutrition and insufficient exercise is resulting in significant population segments being overweight and in poor health. This is increasing health costs and dissatisfaction of individuals with their weight, health and self-image, which in turn is a contributor to loss of productivity and depression.
Current diet and preventive programs appear to be ineffective. While significant monies are spent on diet-related solutions and fitness, existing methods are not producing the desired improvements in health and well being.
Similar problems exist in disease management or prevention. Effective management or prevention of disease generally requires adherence by individuals to specific behaviour including treatment and lifestyle regimens (including nutrition, exercise, rest, etc.). More and more resources are being spent on disease prevention, and even more so on disease management, incorporating lifestyle elements; however, the results produces by these programs are generally less than adequate.
A significant contributor is that current methods do not adequately address the need for effective, personalized behaviour modification, and furthermore the regime that is likely to produce results for an individual has been shown to be dependent on various individual factors, and yet solutions that produce personalized programs are relatively uncommon, or if they exist they generally involved personalized analysis, coaching and training, which however is generally quite expensive. Furthermore, in the areas of disease management (the term being used generally to include weight management), an integrated approach to all behaviours associated with the disease management goals is required, yet existing methods generally fail to take such an integrated approach.
Even in relation to personalized approaches based on personal assessments and personal coaching, prior art solutions do not address the fact that better results and lasting results have been shown to be produced if there is a good personality match between the client and the coach.
People are busier and busier, and for this and other reasons appear to be less able to make the time investment generally required to reach and maintain disease management goals. Scheduling regular coaching or training based on in person meetings becomes a real obstacle, and has a limiting effect on the ability to meet disease management goals.
Genetic testing is now available to assess predisposition for developing a disease, and even susceptibility to weight gain, based on the individual's genetic makeup. Yet, integration of genetic testing in disease management or prevention regimens is relatively rare.
There is a need for a method that addresses the shortcoming of current approaches and technologies to disease management. There is a particular need for a system that leverages technology to automate aspects of disease management in order to produce better behaviour modification results and make personalized disease management more affordable and accessible.